EDITORIAL: Around the world ... campaign ads, Boy Scouts, Syria

It is impossible to watch television or browse the Internet without being bombarded by political ads. Most citizens have been getting propaganda in the mail nearly each day. Chain letter emails spread like wildfire, often containing only half-truths and one-sided presentations of information that is taken out of context.

The point is, citizens must educate themselves and pay close attention to the information they're given, where it comes from and who stands to gain from it.

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The truth is hidden somewhere in the political spin and propaganda, but voters will have to be smart in seeking it.

The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Miss., on Boy Scouts records:

Add the Boy Scouts of America to the list of trusted institutions that failed sexually abused children.

The Scouts' past behavior, like that of the Catholic Church and Penn State University, shows how easily child molesters can get away with vicious crimes and how easily respected institutions can convince themselves that keeping crimes a secret is acceptable.

From 1970 to 1991, the Boy Scouts failed to report hundreds of suspected sexual abusers to authorities and in some cases "urged admitted offenders to quietly resign," sending them off with clean recommendations, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times of the Scouts' once confidential files. The Scouts' failure meant predators were free to stalk and abuse more innocent children, and some did.

The Scouts say that what matters most are its policies today, not files going back decades. And that's true. But since the pre-1992 records were forced into the open as a result of litigation, the Scouts have not released their more recent records or combed through those files to cull and report suspected abusers.

So why haven't the Scouts gone back through their post-1991 files to bring more abusers to justice? Because, a spokesman says, the files "are an incomplete record set that are not used to track reporting."

That's not much of an excuse for an organization that offers a crime prevention merit badge. Until recently, the organization's top leaders would not have qualified to earn it.

Arab News, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Syria:

The Free Syrian Army has once again demonstrated its ability to strike at the heart of the Assad regime. The military's General Staff Command Building has been extensively damaged in two major explosions that were followed by a ground attack that last for two hours.

Tragically, there is rising evidence that this bitter civil conflict is heading for a stalemate with the fighters unable to make the progress they planned.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the United Nations that the organization was paralyzed because Russian and Chinese vetoes in the Security Council meant that no progress could be made toward the international community finding a solution. Such an outright criticism of Moscow and Beijing demonstrates the depth of Washington's frustration.

If Assad's troops therefore cannot win, the question is how they will lose this civil war. The answer may lie in some more explosions, in which the bombers somehow clearly penetrated the highest security. Were more top members of the regime to perish, maybe even Assad himself, in a similar blast, inside a supposedly secure area, the fighting might at last come to an end. Then, they would have to begin a long and difficult process of reconciling bitter foes, in the name of a united and free Syria.